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AUTHOR ARCHIVES

Joseph Marks

Joseph Marks covers government technology issues, social media, Gov 2.0 and global Internet freedom for Nextgov. He previously reported on federal litigation and legal policy for Law360 and on local, state and regional issues for two Midwestern newspapers. He also interned for Congressional Quarterly’s Homeland Security section and the Associated Press’s Jerusalem Bureau. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Wisconsin and a master’s in international affairs from Georgetown.

April 9, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
Cienpies Design / Shutterstock.com Every major federal agency is now using Twitter and YouTube and 23 of the 24 major agencies are on Facebook. The Nuclear Regulatory Agency -- the only major agency reported as not using any of the three major social networking sites in a June 2011 report...

April 6, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
Federal workers with disabilities should be called on to test government information technology systems before new systems are rolled out and the White House should impose uniform governmentwide guidelines for accessibility, respondents to an ongoing crowdsourced survey are saying. Federal technology officials also should do more to educate contractors and...

April 5, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
Application programming interfaces will be a major component of Federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel's new government digital strategy due out in April, the CIO tweeted Thursday. The digital reform strategy will combine two strategies the CIO's office has been discussing -- one aimed at cleaning up the federal web...

April 5, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
"Bring your own device" is a good solution for a lot of things federal employees do on a daily basis such as word processing, emailing, texting and instant messaging, the Agriculture Department's Associate Chief Information Officer Owen Unangst said Wednesday. When it comes to a custom-built and mission-critical application that...

April 4, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
Flickr user Derrick Coetzee Federal officials tasked with updating records management systems want better guidance on which records must be preserved and a schedule for when they should be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration, Archivist of the United States David Ferriero said Wednesday. The officials also...

April 3, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
The General Services Administration is continuing to invest heavily in videoconferencing, teleconferencing and other technologies that save money by reducing employee travel but hasn't been specifically asked to ramp up those activities in the wake of news Monday about a budget-busting live conference in Las Vegas that cost GSA Administrator...

April 3, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
Federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel's chief aim in office is to cut down the amount of money agencies spend on technology operations and maintenance so that they can plow that money back into new initiatives, he said Tuesday. Traditionally, the government has funded new projects by adding money to...

April 1, 2012
Solyndra’s Silver Lining The congressional investigation into alleged mishandling of a $528 million Energy Department loan guarantee to the now-bankrupt solar energy company Solyndra was bad news overall for the department. But there was one positive outcome: Energy developed an innovative tool to search for all the documents investigators were...

April 1, 2012
When New Media Specialist Gray Brooks arrived at the Federal Communications Commission in 2009, the flagship website featured about 200 links on its home page, and two clicks away there were another 40,000 options. FCC.gov hadn’t been fundamentally redesigned in eight years. When officials wanted to add content, they’d essentially...

March 30, 2012
FROM NEXTGOV
This story has been updated. The Office of Management and Budget launched an expansion of Federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel's TechStat program for troubled technology projects Friday. The new program, known as PortfolioStat, will require agency chief operating officers or deputy secretaries to lead agencywide information technology portfolio reviews...